Relationships Can Affect Weight Loss, Study Finds

How Your Relationship Might Be Hindering Your Weight Loss Efforts

Long Story Short

Ever wonder how your efforts — even your very presence — either help or hinder your partner’s efforts to lose weight? There’s now some science for that.

Long Story

What do you do when your partner says they want to lose weight? How do you help? It’s not easy. What to one couple might seem like healthy, reinforcing behaviours will to another feel like restrictive rules against which to rebel.

Thankfully, a researcher from the University of Texas felt your pain and decided to attack the issue with some science. The result is ‘Exploring the role of the romantic relationship context in weight loss’ — a paper published in late February in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

To better understand the role of romantic partners in weight loss, UT’s René M. Dailey surveyed 44 individuals from a Southwestern city in the U.S. who were actively trying to lose weight, asking about the roles of their partner in their weight loss.

In an interview with Psypost, Dailey basically points out that we’re tangled in a mess of emotions with our partners. There were three central discoveries:

First, the vast majority of participants wanted weight loss to be a team effort. That is, they were looking for help around the household — making meals, looking after kids — so they could better focus on their exercise.

Second, romantic relationships often raised obstacles to weight loss, such as opposing perspectives and negative self-reflections, or even just a conflict between physical and romantic needs (“Why are you exercising when we should be making out?”).

Finally, individuals might make it difficult for partners to provide support through mixed messages about what they require or inconsistent reactions. The example Dailey gives: “Some individuals reacted positively to their partner’s suggestion to go for a walk one day but then had a negative reaction the next day.”

The one major caveat in the study as far as Dailey is concerned is that the 44-person sample size isn’t big enough, but she says this is just an early step that needs to be assessed in future research.